Student Life

Community

Bandung Alliance Intercultural School is a small school with around 166 students who are a close-knit family. If you attend BAIS, almost everyone knows you by name, and you will be greeted as you walk through the halls. BAIS is more than just a school. It’s a community. It’s filled with teachers who care about you and invest in your lives. It has students who will take you under their wing when you first arrive, and who will be there for you when you need them. Below is an excerpt of a student’s description of the BAIS community:

“International schools are extremely intricate institutions that bind together incredibly different young people each with different ethnicities, cultures, languages, and experiences. If an international school were to not have any of the important foundations for a strong community then it would merely become a collection of cliques and gangs, segregated based on ethnicity or culture. Therefore, the foundations of a strong community are of utmost importance when shaping a healthy culture in an international school. These foundations can be summed up into three ideas: a common language, a mutual understanding between each culture, and shared experiences.

The presence of a common language is profound as it destroys barriers between these different communities, thereby keeping the ethnic communities but also bridging the ethnic communities together. A common language works like a road between different towns. In BAIS, there are major American, Indonesian, Korean, and Taiwanese communities, thus, if one was to consider each as a town, then a common language, english, work work as a highway between each town, weaving them together and unifying them while still maintaining their town’s distinctiveness.

However, just being able to interact with each other is not enough. To truly build relationships with one another, students in international schools must be able to understand each other by finding something everyone can relate to and to talk about that with an open mind. To initiate this process, leaders, such as teachers or people who have studied at that school for a longer period of time, must gather people of different ethnic groups together and ask for views on something relatable. The topic may be as simple as “what is the best way to use this?” or as complex as “how would you, as x nationality, describe the events of blank?”. The topic in itself does not matter so much as the interaction and exchange of different views.

Finally, shared experiences are incredibly vital to growing a strong, unified community. Often times, communication does not always need words, it can often be expressed through action. Building friendships with others takes action and takes fun. For example, if a person plays basketball with a stranger, then the two do not need to talk to each other because making moves, reacting to each other, playing hard, and having fun builds a relationship that words cannot. In an international school this is an incredibly useful tool. Although there should be a common language, often not all people can use that language to an adequate extent. And, overtime, these relationships can develop into more, even becoming conversational, but, the very existence of these relationships is a great pillar for strong communities.

To conclude, in an international school setting, relationships between people of different ethnicities and culture are intricate bonds that require sufficient foundations provided by the community leadership, but come together to create a stronger and more unified community. To fulfill this, a strong international school community requires the creation of a common language, the building of mutual understanding between different cultures, and the provision of events in which relationships can be made without conversation.”
– Sergio Limandibhratha, Class of 2018

PACE

Parents Active in Children’s Education (PACE) The aim of PACE is to promote the growth of the students of BAIS through parental involvement and support of staff, and to strengthen coordination and communication among parents, students, and staff in order to encourage and support educational activities and to further develop the educational resources of the school.

The aim of PACE is to promote the growth of the students of Bandung Alliance Intercultural School through parental involvement and support of staff, and to strengthen coordination and communication among parents, students, and staff in order to encourage and support educational activities and to further develop the educational resources of the school. Objectives that flow from this purpose statement:

Promote welfare of students through parental involvement

Provide support for staff

Strengthen coordination among parents, students, and staff

Facilitate communication among parents, students, and staff

Further develop educational resources of the school

PACE is always recruiting parents to fill the following volunteer positions during the school year. Please talk to our PACE Coordinator (Ibu Fifi and Deborah Gunthorpe for 2018-2019 school year) if you are interested in being involved in various activities throughout the year, please contact one of them.

Staff Care and Appreciation:

Our teachers and staff at BAIS are fantastic and we want them to know how much we appreciate their commitment to our children. Being a part of this group will give you the opportunity to express your appreciation by remembering their birthdays with a card, providing special snacks on occasion and whatever else you can dream up to let our teachers and staff know how special they are to us.

School Supply Packets/Uniform Sale:

Each year prior to the start of school and during the first week, PACE provides an opportunity for families to purchase their school supply packets at BAIS. There is a slight profit that goes to support PACE, but it is primarily to make things easier for parents and it helps the school with uniform sales.

Family Fun Festival

This is an opportunity for families to come together for a day of food, games, and entertainment. PACE sponsors this event, which also functions as a fundraiser. A committee is needed to put the festival together, as well as the participation of as many parents as possible.